Second year MA student Jackie Maw is pioneering on a new housing development in Aldershot where nearly 4,000 homes will be built over the next 10 years. HH: Jackie, tell us about you and your current setting. We have established a small missional community called Wellspring. We meet weekly for worship in various locations: local ...

Second year MA student Jackie Maw is pioneering on a new housing development in Aldershot where nearly 4,000 homes will be built over the next 10 years.

HH: Jackie, tell us about you and your current setting.

We have established a small missional community called Wellspring. We meet weekly for worship in various locations: local cafes, parks and our home as well. Our activities are focused on community engagement. Working with local residents, we welcome new residents, organise events from street parties, quizzes, family activities, ceramics courses and most recently a small Incredible Edible project and a weekly community cafe drop-in.

We are developing good relationships with the new primary school which has opened with a small reception class where I volunteer as a lunchtime supervisor, as well as supporting RE.

We also have a good relationship with Grainger, the developer, who value the work we do. Our long term aim is to establish a permanent community craft cafe run for the community by the community.

Nearly three years into the project we are embarking on Mark Scandrette’s Ninefold Path with some of our friends and neighbours to explore the question of how we can live well together in this world.

HH: Please tell me more about your ice cream ministry! You have also told me: “Looking back on that [ice cream ministry] and other situations I can see that I was involved in pioneering mission long before I even knew it existed. And “Studying with CMS has helped me think more critically and strategically about the Pioneering that I do today.” Can you say more about this, please?

JM: The combination of safe cycling and well run ice cream parlours in Germany were the drivers for what emerged as Ice Cream Ministry. On Sunday afternoon a group of us would cycle to a local ice cream parlour and simply talk about life, work, family, God and of course eat ice cream! We began to invite friends and neighbours to join us and the conversations naturally led to the big questions of life, to struggles and to prayer.

In Germany ice cream parlours are open from mid-morning to late at night. During the Iraq War it was a good alternative to meeting in pubs in the evening, particularly if we were feeling anxious about husbands and friends fighting far away.

HH: I know you enjoy studying with people who understand the pioneering gift, ‘the gift of not fitting in’. Was this what first brought you to CMS?

JM: I wanted to study alongside people who are also exploring and thinking missionally about the changing context that Christians now inhabit. People who are willing to think differently and, while willing to be informed by Christian traditions, are not constrained by them; people who are willing to take risks in following Jesus’ call to make disciples.

HH: I’m delighted to hear you say: “The standard and quality of teaching is high and it’s hard work, but so rewarding. CMS has a wealth of experience in cross cultural mission and relationships with highly respected academics and practitioners in their fields and we get to benefit from their experience and wisdom. So much learning also takes place within the conversations between students during sessions but also over lunch and coffee. I have made some lifelong friends and mission partners while I’ve been at CMS.” Can you say a bit more about how you are bringing the teaching into your practice?

JM: Oh there is so much. But one particular example is a shift in my thinking about how we communicate the gospel. Much of our mission and evangelism has focused on belief, but the question many are asking is “How shall we live?”

In the module on ecclesiology and mission we thought about how Christian practice informs and shapes our experiences, beliefs and understanding of church. I wanted to find out if starting with Christian practice could be a way to help people explore the radical teachings of Jesus for themselves and in the process encounter him for themselves. We have just started the Ninefold Path with some of our friends and neighbours and will use their experience as the basis for my dissertation.

HH: You told me, “I work on the basis that God is already at work in his world.”

JM: God’s church falters from exhaustion because Christians erroneously think that God has given them a mission to perform in the world. Rather, the God of mission has given his church to the world. It is not the church of God that has a mission in the world, but the God of mission who has a church in the world. The church’s involvement in mission is its privileged participation in the actions of the triune God.

Our role is keeping up with God and being open to the ways that the Spirit is leading us, trusting that people in the world around us are already responding to the Spirit, providing we are willing to listen cross-culturally and to see the new thing that God is doing.

Life doesn’t stop just because you’re studying. I’m in full time ministry which is busy enough, but there are times when we may face additional challenges, for example health issues and bereavement. I have experienced both while I’ve been studying at CMS. I found that the support and understanding of tutors and staff and fellow students has enabled me to continue my MA.

I couldn’t say that I have a favourite module, although the module on Theologies on Global Perspectives did help me to recognise how much we privilege Western theology over theologies from the wider world and how much we have to learn from them. But each time we move on to a different aspect of mission I find I’m engaged and interested and applying what I’m learning to the work I’m doing as a pioneer.

My big questions are all about the difference between being and doing. What does it mean to be the church rather than do church? What does it mean to be missional rather than simply do mission? My two years of study with CMS have been significant in helping me shape these questions, grow in understanding of the issues and at time, express these is academic terms. However, it’s always good to remind oneself that any study has to be in the service of our essential and primary vocation – that of being in Christ from which everything else springs. For me that is an ongoing project, and I’m glad that CMS is part of that.

HH: How can we pray for you Jackie?

JM: As well as our exploration of the Beatitudes (with the Ninefold Path resource), please pray for our longer term project to establish a community cafe on the development as premises are proving difficult to find. Also for creativity in creating a social enterprise that will sustain the mission into the future. Personally: for continued good health and maintaining a healthy rhythm of life that will sustain and nourish my own spiritual life.

As we continue to mark Mental Health Awareness Week, we focus on Finlay Wood. Fin is another graduate of the CMS pioneer course and member of the Starfish Network who was a prison chaplain when he came to study with us. He is now working for the South London and Maudsley NHS Trust (SLaM), providing ...

As we continue to mark Mental Health Awareness Week, we focus on Finlay Wood. Fin is another graduate of the CMS pioneer course and member of the Starfish Network who was a prison chaplain when he came to study with us.

He is now working for the South London and Maudsley NHS Trust (SLaM), providing restorative justice interventions for people convicted of crimes on the grounds of diminished responsibility.

He says of these interventions, “It is appropriate when the client understands and can take responsibility for the impact of what they’ve done even if they committed the crime while being mentally unwell.” He takes them through a recognised and well-documented process and has trained an additional 15 SlaM staff as Restorative Justice facilitators.

Mentally disordered offenders who have been convicted of crimes are often assumed to not have capacity to take part in restorative justice – a system of criminal justice which focuses on the rehabilitation of offenders through reconciliation with victims and the local community.

However, at the Bethlem Royal Hospital, the oldest institution that exists for the treatment of mentally ill people, Fin and a handful of others are pioneering offender/victim mediation, which is currently only offered in prisons.

The Bethlem Royal Hospital has a long track record of innovating. Other national units are also based there, such as the mother and baby unit recently featured in a documentary with Louis Theroux about post-natal depression and postpartum psychosis called Mothers on the Edge, as well as specialist units for eating disorders and autism.

Fin began by leading a restorative justice awareness course in the hospital. He then secured additional funding to pilot four courses and evaluated the impact on 35 patients. The positive impact on reducing the number of assaults on staff, for example, led to him working with the lead consultant psychologist Dr Gerard Drennan and the wider staff team to promote restorative approaches in forensic mental health.

Fin likens his work to the ancient Japanese art of Kintsugi (repairing broken ceramics with gold alloy, so that the cracks become part of the repaired object). He explains: “It honours the cracks in our journey and provides a way for participants to hold their own victimhood.”

Currently, the team at SLaM relies heavily on collaboration with other agencies as part of a London-wide network that also provides Restorative Justice services.

It is hoped that through this pioneering work at SLaM, and other NHS trusts around the country, that the wider NHS would recognise and value restorative approaches in mental health as a necessary and integrated part of the care service they provide.

Continuing our series of blog posts for Mental Health Awareness Week, we’d like to introduce Natalie Roberts, who graduated from the pioneer course delivered in the CMS Oxford Centre a few years ago. She has recently become a contributor to a book project called Courage: Stories of Darkness to Light. Author, Samantha Houghton came up ...

Continuing our series of blog posts for Mental Health Awareness Week, we’d like to introduce Natalie Roberts, who graduated from the pioneer course delivered in the CMS Oxford Centre a few years ago. She has recently become a contributor to a book project called Courage: Stories of Darkness to Light.

Author, Samantha Houghton came up with the idea having shared her own story in the book The Invisible Girl.

Sam found the process of writing incredibly healing and therapeutic. She also had such positive feedback from people who’d been touched and inspired by her personal account that she decided to make a general invitation to others who’d be willing to embark on a similar journey.

The authors of Courage: stories of darkness to light, with Sam Houghton pictured next to Natalie in the middle row, second from left.

As a result, she’s worked with 11 participants, Natalie being one. Each of them has a story of overcoming serious difficulties or adverse life circumstances such as abuse, neglect, abandonment, rejection, violence and drug addiction, the impact of childhood bullying in adulthood and thriving with chronic illness. Sam believes that by sharing these experiences with a wider audience, it will help others find strength and hope in their own mental health challenges.

Sam has mentored the fledgling authors and in just eight weeks they’ve each produced a 5,000 word chapter. All the proceeds from the book are going to The Samaritans, who offer support to those at their point of greatest need, and it’s hoped sales will raise awareness about some of the situations that can lead to mental ill health.

The chapter Natalie has written concerns how she overcame a reactive disorder known as Cassandra Syndrome and dealt with the consequences of her husband being diagnosed with Asperger’s.

She says of the project: “All the contributors have been in a very dark place and are now out the other side, having learnt a lot. The stories are a combination of inspiration and what helped us get through. We would like those reading to feel validated by recognising their struggles in the experience of others.” You can follow the book’s progress to publication at their Facebook page.

Participating in this project has been really important for Natalie: “Writing the chapter for the book has been a final healing process, a full-stop at the end of a chapter, a chapter that Pete and I have both recovered from and benefited from. The project has brought further closure and it’s something in my past that I’m not carrying into the new chapter of my life that’s unfolding.”

Looking forward, Natalie has set up a coaching business to assist others who may be facing mental health challenges related to having family members on the autism spectrum. Natalie’s website describes her as “The Asperger’s Relationship Coach”.

In addition to her pioneer mission training, she is also an accredited Master Coach and qualified Mental Health First Aider. Other former students in the Starfish Network are currently being helped by Natalie through this enterprise and if you would like more information then please visit her website www.natalieroberts.com.

It’s mental health awareness week, so we are focusing on some of the work pioneers are doing in that arena. Church Mission Society sent out a press release today to highlight this. As we recently featured on the blog, Mark and Jess Bamping launched Candid (pictured) over the Easter weekend, which is set to become a thriving ...

It’s mental health awareness week, so we are focusing on some of the work pioneers are doing in that arena. Church Mission Society sent out a press release today to highlight this.

As we recently featured on the blog, Mark and Jess Bamping launched Candid (pictured) over the Easter weekend, which is set to become a thriving community hub where people can gather and develop meaningful relationships over a locally brewed craft beer and other shared interests. Helping to combat loneliness and isolation, particularly among men, was an important factor in the thinking behind Candid.

Natalie Roberts, a recent pioneer course graduate, is one of 11 contributors to Courage: Stories of Darkness to Light by author Samantha Houghton. The hope is that this book, all proceeds of which will be donated to The Samaritans, will help people at mental health crisis points in their lives.

Finlay Wood, another CMS pioneer course alumnus, is working for the South London and Maudsley NHS Trust, providing restorative justice interventions for people convicted of crimes on the grounds of diminished responsibility.

We’ll be posting more about Natalie’s and Fin’s work – so watch this space.

Last weekend was the first teaching weekend for the latest of our training hubs for lay pioneers. ‘Holy Rumpus!’ is a partnership between CMS and the Diocese of Bath and Wells and it joins the St Cedd Centre in the Diocese of Chelmsford and the School of Pioneers developed with London Diocese in delivering the ...

‘Holy Rumpus!’ is a partnership between CMS and the Diocese of Bath and Wells and it joins the St Cedd Centre in the Diocese of Chelmsford and the School of Pioneers developed with London Diocese in delivering the CMS Certificate.

The Holy Rumpus! pioneers are studying six modules, each taught over a Saturday and Sunday residential in different contexts around the diocese.

We kicked off in Wells, learning about mission, pioneering and reading culture. In my sessions, I was particularly looking at connection points for mission afforded by cathedrals and sacred springs.

Although, the real highlights for me were the very different expressions of worship that were interspersed throughout the weekend. Jonny began by leading us in reflecting on seeds and pioneering. Tina Hodgett, who is hosting the hub, presided at a very simple but beautiful communion service in the Bishop’s Palace chapel on Saturday evening and I conducted worship outside on Sunday morning in the amazing gardens right by St Andrew’s Well. I felt we joined with all creation, as well as the cathedral bells, in giving praise to our good and glorious God!

I also particularly enjoyed our meal together at the end of our first day of teaching. It was great to begin to get to know the 20 people who have signed up to the course and we heard some wonderfully inspiring stories of hope and God’s faithfulness in the midst of addiction and brokenness.

The next weekend will take place in July and will be based on a social housing estate in Bath. Diana Greenfield will be teaching on reading the Bible. Diana is currently walking a section of the Camino de Santiago with a pagan friend and will be drawing on this experience for her forthcoming article in the next edition of Anvil which will be on mission to the spiritual but not religious. That’s definitely one to look out for!

The module after that will be ‘Doing Theology’ with John Wheatley in Weston-super-Mare. So welcome ‘Holy Rumpus!’ to the Starfish Network! It’s great to have you with us in this growing community of pioneer practice.

Apologies – I never thought I would quote a Lionel Ritchie song in the title of a blog post but there you go! But we are excited to let you know about Fiesta in London in July which will be a festival for pioneers and others involved in making a better world especially in their ...

Apologies – I never thought I would quote a Lionel Ritchie song in the title of a blog post but there you go! But we are excited to let you know about Fiesta in London in July which will be a festival for pioneers and others involved in making a better world especially in their communities. The programme is looking really good with a mix of talks, fantastic food, entertainment, spirituality, workshops. It’s being hosted in Earlsfield where Johnny Sertin on our team lives and he is taking the lead on pulling it together. It’s also really cheap at £40 – though you need to find your own accommodation – but hopefully you know someone in London you can blag a sofa or bed from for the weekend?! Back in the old days (!) of emerging church and alternative worship there were some weekend festival type gatherings that felt really significant and important spaces so we’re am excited to see this landing. As the wider network of pioneers grows with new hubs and centres we hope that we’ll be able to add a festival type gathering into the mix each year. So this is the first. You can sign up here and it will be a great event to invite others in your networks and communities to. Looking forward to it! The details are on the web page linked to above but the dates are July 12-14 and there are no day tickets so you need to get a weekend one.

Jeanette Hewes is a lay pioneer training with the St Cedd Centre for Pioneer Mission, a pioneer training hub that is a partnership between Church Mission Society and the Diocese of Chelmsford. Here she shares how she learned her calling had a name – Pioneer! I was born into a non-Christian family which was very ...

Jeanette Hewes is a lay pioneer training with the St Cedd Centre for Pioneer Mission, a pioneer training hub that is a partnership between Church Mission Society and the Diocese of Chelmsford. Here she shares how she learned her calling had a name – Pioneer!

I was born into a non-Christian family which was very dysfunctional. I became a Christian in my late teens, and for the first time, knew that I was loved.

I actually mattered enough for someone to not only notice my existence but to die for me. God cared for every part of my life and his heart broke for the rejection I carried deep inside me.

A place where community happens: Jeanette Hawes (left) at the Turquoise Table

When I fell in love with Jesus, I pledged to let my heart break for what broke his.

As I matured over the years in my Christian journey, that promise has matured also. I have always been an activist for the marginalised and longed to act as God wanted me to respond.

I grew up without the experience of proper family love and was determined that my own children would always know how much they were loved and wanted. This led me to set up a Christian youth homelessness charity in the early 2000s.

Since then, I have worked for Frontier Youth Trust on a project for young adult offenders and also managed a foodbank which was founded to respond to the needs caused by the 2008 financial crisis and subsequent austerity measures.

I guess that seeing the world through God’s lens is part of my DNA. I love being part of a church family but am constantly aware of those who feel they don’t belong inside a church.

My vicar searched for four years to find something that would ‘scratch the itch’ of my thirst for deepening my theological understanding, while promoting the call to activism that God placed on my heart.

I went to a Church Mission Society/Chelmsford Diocese pioneer ministry conversations and taster day, and found the way I am wired has a name: Pioneer!

Becoming a student at the St Cedd Centre for Pioneer Mission has enabled me to grow in theological understanding while continuing to practise in the mission field of my local community. More than anything, it has helped me to understand that God is already at work there and I am blessed to be able to join in with what he is doing.

Pioneering is often a lonely journey, so meeting regularly with likeminded people is a huge encouragement.

The Turquoise Table

The St Cedd’s course coincided with my latest venture. I live on a relatively deprived housing estate and we have placed a picnic table in our open plan front garden which we have painted bright turquoise. It has a sign on it, which says: “The Turquoise Table. You are welcome here. A community gathering place.”

It is around the Turquoise Table, that we do ‘church’ in a variety of different ways. There are large community events such as Halloween, Christmas carol service, summer street party and storytime week for the children. But it is also a place for peace and gentleness, where one-to-one conversations take place over a cup of coffee and a piece of cake. It is where the Turquoise Table team meet to pray for our community and to fellowship. It is where those who would not go to church get the opportunity to meet with the Jesus who sat at the Samaritan well and met the needs of a marginalised woman who in turn introduced her community to Jesus.

The Turquoise Table is the meeting hub for the whole community. It is a place of reconciliation where two feuding neighbours came together to sing Christmas carols along with 40+ others and where I can look out of my window and see a bunch of children spending an afternoon doing craft activities organised by their mothers. The community taking ownership.

Jeanette Hewes is a member of Berechurch St Margaret w St Michael, Colchester. She is one of the second cohort of lay pioneers being supported through the St Cedd Centre for Pioneer Mission in the Diocese of Chelmsford.

‘Stepping into the Unknown’

To discover more about pioneer ministry, share ideas with others or discern if you want to join the third cohort at the St Cedd Centre, do come to the on Saturday 18 May 9.30am to 3.30pm to Meadgate Church, Chelmsford, when the Diocese of Chelmsford will be holding a Pioneer Ministry Conversations / Taster Day in partnership with Church Mission Society.

There will be workshops by local pioneers, market place stalls to have conversations with current and previous students from the St Cedd Centre plus others involved in pioneering within the diocese. The keynote speaker will be Paul Bradbury, who is a pioneer practitioner, author and CMS pioneer hub coordinator base in Poole.

To book your place or to find out further information please email: julieclay@thegoodshepherd.co.uk or call her on 01708 745626.

Mark and Jess Bamping launch their community hub – Candid Beer in Stafford this weekend. Mark loves beer and I am sure will brew as well as serve up decent local and creative independent craft beers. But the driver is community and rather than calling it a cafe or pub it’s a community hub. Mark ...

Mark and Jess Bamping launch their community hub – Candid Beer in Stafford this weekend. Mark loves beer and I am sure will brew as well as serve up decent local and creative independent craft beers. But the driver is community and rather than calling it a cafe or pub it’s a community hub. Mark brought the idea to our make good week a while back now and when he made his pitch, as well as serving beer he had brewed (making it a memorable pitch), he was concerned about loneliness and thinking that men in particular will gather around doing stuff together (such as brewing beer). They have developed this into the design of the space and there being a room for groups and activities as well as a larger table to gather round. Rraise a glass of craft beer today to toast Candid beer on their launch and go visit if you are anywhere nearby.

There is a Make Good week coming up at Cliff College 13-17 May and there are a few spaces left so if you have an idea for a project or enterprise to make good in the world then sign up!

Helen Harwood interviews second year diploma student, Andy Meek HH: You have told me you think you have always been a bit anti-establishment. Can you explain a bit more where that comes from and how it relates to pioneering, please, and how they both relate to ‘not fitting in’? AM: I blame the radio. As ...

Helen Harwood interviews second year diploma student, Andy Meek

HH: You have told me you think you have always been a bit anti-establishment. Can you explain a bit more where that comes from and how it relates to pioneering, please, and how they both relate to ‘not fitting in’?

AM: I blame the radio. As a teenager in the 60s and 70s I was surrounded by music of the civil rights and anti-Vietnam protests and news of the Troubles in Northern Ireland and the Prague Spring. Growing up in Norwich, I could listen to all the pirate stations broadcasting from ships in the North Sea. I started a supporters club called the Independent Radio Association and had posters made. One day I got home from school to be told that the police had paid a visit and demanded the poster be removed from my window – for promoting the Irish republican paramilitary organisation, the IRA. In my youthful ignorance of politics, I hadn’t spotted the coincidental significance of the initials! The music charts cartwheeled through pop to prog rock to psychedelia and on through a dozen different genres leading to punk protest against (an earlier) austerity Britain. It was a time later described by theologian Arbuckle [1] as the “Revolution of Expressive Disorder”. My mother said: “You are the grit in the oyster.” Or, in the words of the T. Rex song, I am one of the ‘Children of the Revolution’.

Part of being anti-establishment I suppose is down to the times when I was born and brought up. I was part of the post-war baby boom, which created a shock-wave of social change throughout the western world, cresting over the long-period tsunami of the decline of modernism and its ‘traditional’ worldview of hierarchies and fixed truths. Somehow, young people wanted a better world; I remember being at junior school and hearing air raid sirens being tested and even as 10 year-olds we knew that this could only be a four-minute warning so it seemed to bring an urgency to life. For me particularly, these cultural changes came through the music of the period and even then, before I had any Christian understanding, I searched for meaning and truth in the lyrics of the pop charts. Probably the definitive statement was from Dylan in The Times They Are A Changin’ [2]:

Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don’t criticize
What you can’t understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is
Rapidly agin’.
Please get out of the new one
If you can’t lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin’.

Now to me, even 40 years later, this still feels like unfinished business. It was a message to society in general, but also, I believe, to the church then and still today. I am temperamentally and philosophically disinclined to follow an ordination pathway that places an emphasis on ‘obedience’ (2). But I still have a strong sense of personal calling to Christian mission – how to fulfil? Getting trained seemed like a good idea, hence CMS. To use a military analogy, I am in the resistance, one of the irregulars.

HH: You told me you had recognised the need for a theological grounding, how do you feel this recognition came about?

AM: In some ways it’s another manifestation of my anti-authoritarianism. Knowledge is power and I have often sensed that when I had some unease or disagreements with various teachings or practices in churches, I was not sufficiently well informed to be able to offer a counter-narrative that would not be dismissed as ignorant. Also sensing some (yet to be fully identified) calling to do Christian work outside of traditional organisational structures, I realised that I would have to carry the knowledge with me, like a spaceship carrying its own atmosphere. And I wanted a review, validation and recalibration of my personal Christian faith and insights which have formed in an unstructured way over years of sermons, prayer meetings and popular Christian literature.

HH: So knowing you needed training or grounding, what brought you to CMS?

Andy’s carrelet

I was already in the general frame of mind to enter into some kind of training and I talked to some CMS people at the display stand at Greenbelt in 2017, following on with a longer discussion with Jonny Baker. Because the academic year starts in autumn, it was make my mind up time as a deadline for applications approached a few weeks later. Still undecided about the commitment (time, travel, money) I was praying and received (most unusually) a confirmatory vision. I’m a bit sheepish about mentioning it because I moved away from a church where I became sceptical when ‘visions’ seemed ten a penny. I noticed on the floor a small object which was a ladder that had fallen off an ornament that has been on my mantelpiece for years. It is a carrelet – a kind of French fishing hut which is like a small pier that juts out over a rocky cliff and lets its net down with a hoist. I felt like the cartoon character who has been hit on the head with a falling anvil [ANVIL!] – the message from God to me was clear, that I had to put back in place the ladder – the means of ascent, ie, training to enable me to take up a position in the place of fishing, ie, outreach work.

HH: You say: “I have been a Christian many years and have come across various religious expressions in passing, but the CMS Pioneer course has provided an opportunity to engage intellectually with writers and theologians who I would never have stumbled across in my haphazard personal reading.” Tell me more.

AM: It has been a complete privilege to learn from the lecturers who are not only academics and practitioners in various ways, but who worship with us and are seeking to develop and extend their own understanding of the faith and how it can be put into action. It has also been so enriching to learn with a cohort of students from a wide variety of life situations and ministry involvements. What is going on is not just academic knowledge acquisition, but Christian character formation, as indeed the Common Awards scheme criteria require. I was delighted to learn through the course of the difference between ‘modality’ (parish-like fixed church structure) and ‘sodality’ (task-oriented societies or fellowships); so I am not just studying at CMS, but I feel part of it.

A great image for me is the CMS Library. So many books – I’ll never read them all, or even 10 per cent. But it is presented there, available to be used, as a rich resource of Christian wisdom, insight, practice and theological wrangling. It’s not even a metaphor, it is actually part of the doing of preserving and passing on the message to us and through us to others.

HH: Andy, can you say a bit about the ‘known unknowns’?

AM: Well I have a personal shopping list of things I particularly know are missing and which I would like to learn – especially church history, writings of the Church Fathers (and Mothers, if I can find them) including the developments of the various monastic orders, the spread of the Reformation, the challenge of Protestant theology to Catholicism, the historical church in the east and Africa, the progression of the modern (19th century onwards) missionary movements. I suppose I want to catch the dynamism, the movement of it all. I’m interested to learn from some of the more recent theologies that have developed such as feminist and post-colonial approaches, and in general pick the brains of all manner of highly regarded Christian thinkers.

HH: Lastly, Andy, how can we pray for you?

AM: I am a lone yachtsman on a wide ocean, trying to steer a course by the stars I can see. May I understand my charts. May the wind fill my sails. May I stay salty.

[1] Gerald Arbuckle, From Chaos to Mission: Refounding Religious Life Formation (Gerald Chapman, 1996)
[2] Bob Dylan, The Times They Are A Changin’ (Columbia, 1964), The Times They Are A Changin’
[3] ‘Ministry Grid – Priests (and Transitional Deacons)’ (Anglican Communion Office, 2018)

Following the success or our first InFormation day event last year we are busy organising for InFormation 19 coming up on Monday 10 June at Salisbury Arts Centre. InFormation is a regional day conference for pioneers in the south of England. The day is designed primarily to resource, inspire and refresh participants in their journey ...

Following the success or our first InFormation day event last year we are busy organising for InFormation 19 coming up on Monday 10 June at Salisbury Arts Centre.

InFormation is a regional day conference for pioneers in the south of England. The day is designed primarily to resource, inspire and refresh participants in their journey as pioneers. The focus is primarily on helping one another form as pioneers and disciples of Jesus.

There are a lot of great events out there now to help us learn as pioneers, drawing on the practice of others and on research. InFormation is different in that our emphasis not so much on getting across information, but helping one another form as pioneers – hence In…Formation! There is a greater emphasis therefore on the time and space for connections, conversations and to practically experience the ministry of some of the pioneer community. Last year the green space outside our venue at Salisbury Arts Centre was populated with various tents where people could experience Ruach Card Reading, contemplative prayer and some of the ministry of groups using Christian spiritual practices to engage with seekers.

This year our focus is on worship and discipleship – our own and those we are leading in mission. It is all about learning to connect with God and agree with Him. What helps us grow as pioneers and disciples? How are we helping our new communities of faith grow in ways that are faithful, yet imaginative and contextual? How do we adapt and grow as communities of disciples, particularly with those new to faith and new to church? How can we disciples communities and make disciples?

Matt Finch, Director of Evangelism and Growth for the Methodist Church, will give our main address and we have have contributions from others including Play Chants, Ali Dorey, Graham Horsley and CMS alumnus David Harrigan. Our main resource for the day to help us answer these questions will be the stories and experience of pioneers. So we look forward to a creative blend of inspiring stories and experiential workshops in the context of plenty of space and time for conversation and connection.